Related papers: Simple spheres in simply-connected $4$-manifolds
A shadowed polyhedron is a simple polyhedron equipped with half integers on regions, called gleams, which represents a compact, oriented, smooth 4-manifold. The polyhedron is embedded in the 4-manifold and it is called a shadow of that…
In this paper, we study contact structures supported by open book decompositions whose pages are four-punctured spheres. The paper is split into two parts. In the first part, we find infinitely many overtwisted, right-veering monodromies on…
A finite nonabelian simple group does not admit a free action on a homology sphere, and the only finite simple group which acts on a homology sphere with at most 0-dimensional fixed point sets ("pseudofree action") is the alternating group…
In this note, we extend the theory of Chern-Cheeger-Simons to construct canonical invariants for a one-parameter family of flat connections on a smooth manifold. These invariants lie in degrees $(2p-2)$-cohomology with $\C/\Z$-cohomology,…
We exhibit a closed aspherical 5-manifold of nonpositive curvature that fibers over a circle whose fundamental group is hyperbolic relative to abelian subgroups such that the fiber is a closed aspherical 4-manifold whose fundamental group…
We show that there exists an algorithm that takes as input two closed, simply connected, topological 4-manifolds and decides whether or not these 4-manifolds are homeomorphic. In particular, we explain in detail how closed, simply…
In this paper, we apply the theory of Chern-Cheeger-Simons to construct canonical invariants associated to a $r$-simplex whose points parametrize flat connections on a smooth manifold $X$. These invariants lie in degrees…
Maximally symmetric manifolds with holonomy in the unitary quaternionic group Sp(d/4) emerge from the non-Abelian Kaluza-Klein reduction of conformally flat spaces. Thus, all special manifolds with constant properly `holonomy-related'…
A discrete d-manifold is a finite simple graph G=(V,E) where all unit spheres are (d-1)-spheres. A d-sphere is a d-manifold for which one can remove a vertex to make it contractible. A graph is contractible if one can remove a vertex with…
We show that every closed oriented smooth 4-manifold admits a complete singular Poisson structure in each homotopy class of maps to the 2-sphere. The rank of this structure is 2 outside a small singularity set, which consists of finitely…
Examples of aspherical closed symplectic 4-manifolds are presented whose Sullivan minimal models are (1,n)-formal for any n, without being formal. They have as cohomology algebra, signature, canonical class, those of a product of a closed…
We describe the topology of the moduli spaces of flat metrics for all the 3-dimensional closed manifolds. We give an algebraic description of the moduli spaces for the 4-dimensional closed flat manifolds with a single generator in their…
Maps between manifolds $M^m\to N^{m+\ell}$ ($\ell>0$) have multiple points, and more generally, multisingularities. The closure of the set of points where the map has a particular multisingularity is called the multisingularity locus. There…
We introduce the notion of a flat extension of a connection $\theta$ on a principal bundle. Roughly speaking, $\theta$ admits a flat extension if it arises as the pull-back of a component of a Maurer-Cartan form. For trivial bundles over…
We show that there exist flat surface bundles with closed leaves having non-trivial normal bundles. This leads us to compute the Abelianisation of surface diffeomorphism groups with marked points. We also extend a formula of Tsuboi that…
We produce examples of pairwise non-diffeomorphic closed irreducible 4-manifolds with non-trivial free abelian fundamental group of rank less than three and small Euler characteristic. These exotic smooth structures become standard after…
Almost-flat manifolds were defined by Gromov as a natural generalisation of flat manifolds and as such share many of their properties. Similarly to flat manifolds, it turns out that the existence of a spin structure on an almost-flat…
In order to include nontrivial spatial topologies in the problem of quantum creation of a universe, it seems to be necessary to generalize the sum over compact, smooth 4-manifolds to a sum over finite-volume, compact 4-orbifolds. We…
We give several criteria on a closed, oriented 3-manifold that will imply that it is the boundary of a (simply connected) 4-manifold that admits infinitely many distinct smooth structures. We also show that any weakly fillable contact…
If $n \geq 3$, then moduli space ${\mathcal M}_{0,[n+1]}$, of isomorphisms classes of $(n+1)$-marked spheres, is a complex orbifold of dimension $n-2$. Its branch locus ${\mathcal B}_{0,[n+1]}$ consists of the isomorphism classes of those…